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Thursday, 21 May 2015

Since the teaser photo I posted from LSCC with me chatting to Jonathan Ross at London Super Comic Con - the interview is finally ready and despite much technical difficulties most of it has been salvaged.

I ask Wossy about anime, games, Junko Mizuno and his newest comic book project - it was an honour to speak to my senpai. Thank you to my team who helped make this possible ^_^

Host - Aisha Anime - http://aishaanime.blogspot.com/

Guest - Jonathan Ross @wossy

Cameraman - Ambinerdtrous - http://www.youtube.com/user/dac700

Edit - Geo-san - https://www.facebook.com/GeoSan.UK

Behind the scene photos: Anty Quinn

For more quirky interviews, reviews on anime/games/events please follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Monday, 18 May 2015

Festival Asia debuted last weekend on 15-19th May at the upcoming event venue Tobacco Dock. After seeing vigorous marketing at tube station, on social media, Time Out, Evening Standard it was time to go and see what the event had to offer.

This was the first Eastern event I had attended covering the whole scope of Asian cultures in the UK. Cultures included: Indian, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Indonesian, Malaysian, Vietnamese and more

At 2pm signed up for the Calligraphy classes (free) from Magna (Mandarin Chinese Language in London) http://www.magnaedu.org/ Over 40 of us sqeezed into the room. Our teacher explained the strokes used and the names and how fine word or phrase in calligraphy can be sold for a much as 2 million pounds.
Starting from the correct hand grip to drawing dots to longer strokes we wet our brushes and practiced on different alphabet sheets.

http://www.taikowest.com/

Next we came across the Taiko West room where Master James showed two teas a simple routine. With a loose grip for strong flick actions we built up speed by bring the sticks closer tot he drumb and lowered the volume by lessening the wacks but at the same distance. Best thing is to look at his site for classes to understand properly. After a 30 minute session we were all in the mood to watch the Taiko collective on stage.

If you came to part with your money Festival Asia had some great exhibitors selling culural items from henna to cute anime inspired plushies. Here we have an array of Buddah and Hindu God statues for sale in an assortment of semi precious stones. List of all the sellers are here.

One of my favourite dessert stalls was hidden downstairs, anyone who is partial to a good Doriyaki knows Wagashi Bakery and who else was there as spoke woman but the owner of the UK distributions. Interview with Harue Taguchi.

Friday, 15 May 2015

PLAYTONIC GAMES, a new development studio formed by the creative talent behind renowned adventure series such as Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country, is delighted to announce that its Kickstarter campaign for YOOKA-LAYLEE, the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, is now the Most Funded UK campaign ever for a video game, overtaking Frontier Developments’ Elite: Dangerous.

YOOKA-LAYLEE reached its £175,000 goal within 40 minutes of the campaign launching but also YOOKA-LAYLEE was the fastest game project in the world to reach a $1,000,000 equivalent. According to data supplied by Kickstarter, the YOOKA-LAYLEE campaign reached the figure in just 5 hours and 41 minutes - pretty impressive.

“The response to YOOKA-LAYLEE has been incredible and from all of us here at PLAYTONIC, we really want to say a huge, warm ‘thank you’ to everyone who has helped us exceed our goal,” said Gavin Price, Creative Lead at PLAYTONIC. “The enthusiasm and support from the community has been truly humbling. We’re now in a fantastic position to make YOOKA-LAYLEE at the level and scope that the fans have demanded.”

PLAYTONIC is still accepting pledges for YOOKA-LAYLEE until 12AM BST on Wednesday 17th June as it pushes towards the £2,000,000 stretch goal, which will reward backers with free additional game content, which will be planned, created and released after the final game is finished. The additional funding will also help PLAYTONIC to continue to polish the game to the Nth degree!

Who are the PLAYTONIC Team?

Founded in 2014, PLAYTONIC GAMES is an independent developer based in Derby, UK, comprised of:

Chris Sutherland (Project director): 25 years at Rare. Chris was the lead engineer on many of Rare’s classic IPs including Donkey Kong Country and Banjo Kazooie, and was Producer on Viva Piñata, Rare’s Avatars for Xbox and Kinect Sports.

Gavin Price (Creative lead): 15 years at Rare. Gavin joined Rare during the N64 era and moved up the design ranks at all levels working on the Banjo Kazooie series, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata & the Kinect Sports franchise.

Steve Mayles (Character art): 22 years at Rare. Steve is responsible for creating the modern looking Kong family through his work on the Donkey Kong Country series, creating Banjo Kazooie and leading character art through Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata & the Kinect Sports franchise.

Steven Hurst (Environment art): 18 years at Rare. Steve began creating backgrounds for the DKC
series, before leading background art for the Banjo Kazooie series, Grabbed by The Ghoulies, Viva Piñata & the Kinect Sports franchise.

Mark Stevenson (Technical art): 20 years at Rare. Mark became lead artist working on the Donkey Kong Country series, continuing in this role for DK64 and Kameo, before eventually becoming a lead designer on the Kinect Sports franchise.

Jens Restemeier (Technical director): 8 years at Rare. Jens joined Rare in 1999 and helped recreate Rare’s best known IPs on Nintendo’s handheld consoles before helping Rare develop its own internal technology and ship Perfect Dark Zero for the Xbox 360 launch.

Andy Robinson (Writer): The only member of the team who wasn’t employed at Rare. Andy was a journalist for ten years, editing famous games publication CVG and contributing to Edge and The Sunday Mirror. He’s now a writer at Playtonic.

Tuesday, 12 May 2015

After attending the Bandai namco Level Up event in March i was stunned by the latest installment of The Witcher 3. Garnering over 200 prestigious awards before launch. Set within a truly open world, the game puts you in the role of a seasoned wandering bounty hunter and monster slayer, Geralt of Rivia. In The Witcher, you take on the greatest contract of your life - tracking down the Child of Prophecy, a living weapon that can alter the shape of the world.

The game is out May 19th, 2015, on Xbox One, Windows PC, and PlayStation®4. As a noob to the series I am actually really looking forward to being a bad ass mo fo in this game.

Visit www.thewitcher.com for more information about the game and pre-order availability worldwide.

Monday, 11 May 2015

A lucky select few of press and public were invited to the launch night of Mortal Kombat X. With tweets from Ed Boon saying "Thank you everyone for making Mortal Kombat X the biggest launch in MK history. You made the game FAR exceed our wildest expectations....!!" this was the MK game to pick up. Find out the origins of Toasty here.

The event sponsored by Games Radar and Sony Xperia was held in a luxury Millbank Tower past Westminster Bridge. They provided an assortment of food including mini beef burgers, mushroom burgers, chips and drinks to loosen up all the gamers.

Mortal Kombat X was hooked up to Sony Xperia remote play peripherals to show the capability to playing away from the television screens and possibly in the future in different locations. It was on arcade so no versus battles which was disappointing, People used the control menus to figure out combos and one one person went as far as using fatalities.

On demo Sony had an array of of phones and accessories for the crowd to test, being a Xperia owner for over two years it was interesting to see how they had improved the versions over the years since my Z1.

To start with they had exclusive Sony noise cancelling headphones where I was transported to my own quiet bubble and testing out a higher quality of sound, I had to take the headphones out to hear the rest of the demo.

They also demonstrated the capability of the camera quality aswell as the light intensity. My plus one had an iPhone and we put both to the test. Taking a photo of a hole showing a photo in pitch black, both came out but turning the light intensity you gained a high res version and non distorted photo on the Xperia.

My favorite demonstration was seeing the classic dropping of the phone in a fish bowl and taking photos under water. Also seeing you can use the phone with smear drops without a trouble. As with my original Xperia Z1.

They also introduced a smart watch to work alongside the phone to count steps, also GPS and make phone calls without carrying your phone. The ultimate exercising tool, where you can also do voice activated tasks including making lists, memos and all will be recorded to the app on your phone. Later you can analyse the data of how much you walk, or areas you walk through the most and calorie burned.

Games Radar also invited some guest speakers to provide a Q&A about working in the Games industry including:

Matt Pellett, Editor, Official PlayStation Magazine

David Houghton, Features Editor, GamesRadar

Keza Macdonald, Editor, Kotaku UK

James Jarvis, GTAVoclock

Leon Hurley, Executive Editor, News

Sony were holding a Bloodbourne time trial tournament to win a PS4 bundle, surprisingly a lot of gamers shyed away, public humiliation? Or the fact the game is pretty hard? Someone walked out victorious but all left merry!

Friday, 8 May 2015

So new trailer for a new generation of Star Wars movies with Disney not George Lucas. We have seen Harrison Ford reprising his role of Han Solo, a forever young Chewbacca and many more cameos. May the 4th be with you :-)

About Me

I'm a Journalist, would love to work in the Otaku Community 24/7. I interview cosplayers, voice actors, Japanese Directors of Anime/games/movies. Dress kawaii and cosplay frequently, if you see me at an event, come say Hi :D